Walters: Safety net bills will test Gov. Brown

The first two budgets that Gov. Jerry Brown proposed after returning to the governorship cleaved deeply into California’s safety net of health and welfare services.

Welfare grants and medical care payments were cut, and eligibility for those and other benefits was tightened — all needed, Brown said, to bring a deficit-ridden budget under control.

But it would be more than a temporary belt-tightening, Brown said early in his second governorship.

He not only defended the cuts, but said they would be part of a permanent “retrenchment” in state spending aimed at bringing income and outgo into balance — even if taxes were, as he sought, to be raised.

Brown’s fellow Democrats balked at some of the cuts, but he mostly got his way — in part because they saw welfare cuts as necessary to persuade reluctant voters to raise taxes, which they did in November.

However, the Legislature’s mostly liberal Democrats didn’t buy into Brown’s stance that the cuts would be permanent, and with the state’s finances now more or less in order, they want to ease up on programs affecting the poor.

The federal Affordable Care Act will likely reverse health care cuts. But welfare is another case. This year’s legislative session is seeing a flock of bills to restore welfare benefits. They will test whether Brown meant what he said, or it was just tax hike rhetoric.